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By Sherry F. Pruitt

JONESBORO -- Work being done at the Arkansas State University Biosciences Center could yield benefits that would improve the lives of people throughout the world.

While one group is researching a way to raise better produce and to give it a longer shelf life, another group's research focuses on therapy to confront Parkinson's disease.

Two researchers recently shared their work with The Sun by e-mail correspondence.

Dr. Argelia Lorence, an assistant professor at ABI and the Department of Chemistry and Physics, leads a research group concerned with Vitamin C. The group studies how plants make vitamin C and "how to redirect the plant's metabolism to enrich for this vitamin," she said.

"Vitamin C, also known as ascorbic acid, is a key antioxidant in animals and plants. Humans lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C; and therefore, we must obtain it in our diets -- primarily from fresh fruits and vegetables," she said. "In addition to its antioxidant properties, vitamin C is needed for synthesis of collagen, the most abundant protein in the human body, and [it] may decrease the incidence of several diseases, such as dementia, cancer, stroke, heart disease and atherosclerosis."

For plants, she explained, vitamin C is a critical antioxidant, just as it is in people. It also helps plants cope with environmental stresses such as drought, cold and pollutants.

Lorence discovered a new route for vitamin C formation in plants that starts with "myo-inositol," an abundant sugar found in plant cells and tissues in her collaboration with colleagues from Virginia Tech in Blacksburg in 2004.

In her research Lorence uses a wild mustard plant, which is considered to be the "mouse model" of the plant world. The research is an effort to better understand how myo-inositol is converted to vitamin C, as well as to critical sugars that are essential units in the formation of plant cell walls.

Elevated vitamin C could prevent browning and extend the shelf life of certain produce or cut flowers, she said.

The ongoing research in her group "has potential applications for the development of fruits, vegetables and flowers with longer shelf-life, as well as the development of plants with enhanced nutritional content, better growth and enhanced tolerance to environmental stresses, such as heat, cold, drought, soil salinity, ozone, heavy metals and pathogens," Lorence said.

Parkinson's

Dr. Fabricio Medina-Bolivar, assistant professor of plant metabolic engineering at ABI and the Department of Biological Sciences at ASU, concentrates research on exploiting the pharmaceutical potential of plants.

He has worked with a biological system called "hairy roots" that allows him to grow plant roots in the laboratory.

"The roots in their natural environment -- the soil -- are continuously exposed to many stresses making them able to respond and produce a diverse group of chemicals in order to counterpart these challenges," he said. "Indeed, the hairy roots, grown in the laboratory, are unique chemical factories, producing a large mixture of complex and unpredictable chemical structures."

The chemical diversity represents a valuable tool for drug discovery, he added.

One of the research projects in the Medina-Bolivar lab focuses on identifying potential drugs for the treatment of Parkinson's disease, Medina-Bolivar said.

"Interestingly, data collected over years by several laboratories have shown that smokers have a lower incidence of Parkinson's disease, suggesting that some chemicals (tobacco smoke has over 4,000 chemicals) present in the tobacco smoke may have a biological activity which may lead to a lower incidence of this disease," he said. "It is important to emphasize that the health hazards associated with smoking preclude from using smoking as any therapy."

The Medina-Bolivar group and collaborators, he said, are interested in finding plant-made chemicals that may be beneficial as a therapy for Parkinson's disease.

Medina-Bolivar's group can produce many of the chemicals found in the smoke using the hairy root culture system. He and collaborators are testing the chemicals produced by this means, he said.

They hope to eventually identify a better lead to pharmaceutical drugs that could be used as a therapy to confront Parkinson's disease.

sherry@jonesborosun.com